Possible Merger of Star Trek and Star Wars

With JJ Abrams and Bad Robot now involved in both Star Trek and Star Wars, I was recently revisiting the idea of the possibility of a merger of or cross-over between the 2 universes. And I mean more than just having the same director (JJ Abrams) and production studio (Bad Robot), which would tend to make some stylistic choices the same. I mean an actually in-universes cross-over or merger.

My first thought was how could they ever cross-over between Star Wars (SW) and Star Trek (ST) story lines? Star Wars happen in a galaxy far, far away [with no way to travel to ours, even with the really fast ships of the SW universe] and a long, long time ago [so no way any of the characters from the SW universe would still be alive in ST future time]. Plus, the "rules" about how the SW/science fantasy universe works is very different than the ST/sci-fi universe.

But, upon a little further reflection, this is sci-fi/fantasy after all, I guess a cross-over could happen.
One option is to totally ignore some established stuff, i.e., ret-con some stuff. Like ignoring the "long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" in order to allow the SW and ST universes to exist much closer to each other and in near-same timestream so that crossovers can occur.
Or you could just make a "bridge" between the universes. Like discovering a wormhole that just happens to bridge the two different galaxies AND two different times. Meaning characters will be traveling in time going between the two galaxies. How do you deal with Temporal Prime Directive issues?

However you work the mechanics of bringing the two universes together, some obvious stuff will have to be addressed.

How is it that the Force [and Force-sensitive people] exist in SW and not ST? Maybe it's something that is just not understood by most people in ST universe, but does actually exist. Probably, there would have to be some ST treknobabble explanation, that will probably have to draw on midichlorians. And that might lead to the use of the Force actually becoming more commonplace. After all, in the ST universe wouldn't it just be a combination of telekinetics and telepathy and mind control and clairvoyance? Except for clairvoyance, all of these have been done in ST, but in such a way that they are far more mundane and less “cool” than the SW version. And as for clairvoyance; does ST actually want to go there and say that that is possible in the ST universe? I think not; that's an element of SW that I think ST never wants to touch. It's too mystical; too much science fantasy and not enough science fiction.

How do the droids of SW fit into the tech of ST? Would we have to deal with questions of rights for AIs? SW has always avoided those issues, pretty much just treating their droids as tools and slaves. But ST has at least started to acknowledge the individual rights of AIs like Data. [Although, I might love to see a story where Data and the Doctor help R2D2 gain his rights as a free individual.]
Similar issues come up when you consider how clones are apparently treated as slaves in SW, whereas ST has clearly acknowledged them as people with independent rights.

ST weapons/shields are way more powerful than SW equivalents. That's bound to have some effect on the SW universe. SW battle fleets will shift away from fighting with fighter craft and very large carrier craft to battles between just single, smaller, more capable capital ships like ST does.

SW hyperdrive is way faster than ST warp speed or even ST slipstream. That's bound to have some effect on the ST universe. That would make the ST universe incredibly small overnight. No more exploring the "final frontier"; every point in the galaxy will essentially be just next door to the Earth, reachable by just a few hours, at most, trip.

The human characters we relate to in the SW universe are nothing but humanoid aliens in the ST universe. Would that dynamic take away from the connection we feel with those characters when they start interacting with "real" humans from the ST universe?

So, SW will lose its cool fighter-craft-based space battles and ST will lose its sense of wild frontier exploration.
So, what would be the point?

Unless you merge the two universes, keeping the best of both by exploring different galaxies now (versus planets because they are too close) and keeping battles like ST style (because SW style doesn't make as much sense with weapons as powerful as ST weapons). But, again, what would be the real point? The story will be moving way further from Earth human-centered stories (ST's focus) and further from internal power struggles in a well-established political structure (SW's focus). Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.

Just make the Star Wars galaxy our galaxy in the future, problem solved. people put too much weight on "a long time ago, in a galacpxy far, far away ...", it was only added to give the story a fairy tale flair, if the narrator is in the future and ina different galaxy the line can remain without contradicting that the Star Wars galaxy is our galaxy in the year 12.475.

A horrible event wiped out all live in the alpha and beta quadrants except for a small fleet of Starfleet ships exploring god knows where. Starfleet seems to be primarily human, so the few vulcans, betazoids etc. contributed a little bit to the "new human" genome, but their features vanished.

It's a stupid story and shouldn't be told, but it is actually easy easy to merge the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, they're both sci-fi/fantasy hybrids were pretty much anything can happen.

Just have the Enterprise fall into a black hole or vortex of some kind and emerge a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

In fact, that works for just about any crossover you can think of.

datalogan said:

But, again, what would be the real point? The story will be moving way further from Earth human-centered stories (ST's focus) and further from internal power struggles in a well-established political structure (SW's focus).
Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.

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The point would be the same as any crossover - to have the characters meet. Trek and Wars aren't about "internal power struggles" or whatever the hype says, they're about characters. The people that inhabit the universes and make them entertaining. Only the technical fanboys care about whether a Star Destroyer could defeat the Enterprise. Most people would want to see Han Solo meet James Kirk or Spock have a conversation with Yoda. Just like they wanted to see Iron Man meet Captain America or Thor.

It's so unlikely as to not happen. Especially since the point (having the characters meet) would have to be the original characters played by the original actors for anyone to actually care. And I just don't find that very likely right now.

Having the same director/producer involved doesn't matter, since the copyrights are still owned by two different studios/conglomerates, CBS and Disney/Lucasfilm. The only way such a thing would be remotely possible would be if Disney swallowed up CBS too.

And it's a given that it's not desirable. Who wants the whole SF media universe to be homogeneous? It's good to have diverse, separate properties that offer their own distinct approaches.

I wouldn't say a comics crossover would be out of the question. It's fairly inevitable Marvel will end up doing the SW comics sooner or later now they're both owned by Disney, and IDW not only have been able to put Trek into crossovers with other properties but have a good working relationship with Marvel (things like the various Artist Editions; being able to reprint the Death's Head and Spider-Man Transformers issues and the New Avengers/Transformers crossover).